PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Recent years have seen the rise of several theories saying that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is a neural correlate of visual consciousness (NCC). Especially popular here are theories saying that the PFC is the \'content NCC\' for vision, i.e. it contains those brain areas that are not only necessary for consciousness, but also determine \'what\' it is that we visually experience (e.g. whether we experience green or red). This article points out how this \"upper-deck\" form of PFC theory is at odds with the character of visual experience: on the one hand, visual consciousness appears to contain copious amounts of content, with many properties (such as object, shape, or color) being simultaneously represented in many parts of the visual field. On the other hand, the functions that the PFC carries out (e.g. attention and working memory) are each dedicated to processing only a relatively small subset of available visual stimuli. In short, the PFC probably does not produce enough or the right kind of visual representations for it to supply all of the content found in visual experience, in which case the idea that the PFC is the content NCC for vision is probably false. This article also discusses data thought to undercut the idea that visual experience is informationally rich (inattentional blindness, etc.), along with theories of vision according to which \"ensemble statistics\" are used to represent features in the periphery of the visual field. I\'ll argue that these lines of evidence fail to close the apparently vast gap between the amount of visual content represented in the visual experience and the amount represented in the PFC.
摘要：
近年来，几种理论的兴起表明，前额叶皮层（PFC）是视觉意识（NCC）的神经关联。这里特别流行的理论说PFC是视觉的“内容NCC”，即它包含那些不仅是意识所必需的大脑区域，但也要确定我们视觉体验的是什么（例如，我们体验的是绿色还是红色）。本文指出了PFC理论的这种“上层”形式与视觉体验的特征是不一致的：一方面，视觉意识似乎包含大量的内容，具有许多属性（例如对象，形状,或颜色）在视野的许多部分同时表示。另一方面,例如,PFC执行的功能(例如,注意力和工作记忆)各自专用于仅处理可用视觉刺激的相对小的子集。总之,PFC可能没有产生足够或正确的视觉表示来提供视觉体验中的所有内容，在这种情况下，PFC是视觉内容NCC的想法可能是错误的。本文还讨论了数据思想，以削弱视觉体验信息丰富(无意识失明，等。),与视觉理论一起使用“集合统计”来表示视野外围的特征。我认为，这些证据无法弥合视觉体验中所代表的视觉内容的数量与PFC中所代表的数量之间的巨大差距。
